| Author: | Lee, Siu-tip Christine |
| Title: | The reliability and validity study of the Durand & Crimmins' (1988) motivation assessment scale in assessing challenging behavior of people with severe mental handicap |
| Degree: | M.Sc. |
| Year: | 2001 |
| Subject: | People with mental disabilities -- China -- Hong Kong Hong Kong Polytechnic University -- Dissertations |
| Department: | Department of Nursing and Health Sciences |
| Pages: | viii, 124 leaves ; 30 cm |
| Language: | English |
| Abstract: | Like many other cities in the world, Hong Kong has a significant population of people with mental handicap. When prevalence of challenging behavior among the mentally handicapped people was significant, these behaviors impose both challenges to the health care professionals as well as hinders for the psychosocial development of this client group. Before any individualized treatment program could be tailored, a valid and reliable diagnostic tool to identify the maintaining variables of the behaviors was essential to the success of any treatment program. The Motivation Assessment Scale (MAS) was developed by Durand & Crimmins (1988) for this purpose. Incorporated with the operant learning theory, the MAS was constructed in 4 subscales with 4 items belonged to each of these subscales to identify four types of possible controlling variables, namely sensory, escape, attention and tangible, which maintained challenging behaviors. Despite the MAS was the most common assessment tool in the western countries, its reliability varied across studies. Thus, the interrater reliability, internal consistency and construct validity of the MAS were addressed in this study. 77 subjects (53 male and 24 female) and 4 pairs of raters were recruited. 174 challenging behaviors, classified under the categories of self-injurious (n = 87), stereotyped behavior (n = 30) and aggressive behavior (n = 57), were identified among the 77 subjects. The results of the study showed that the MAS only had a moderate interrater reliability (ICC = 0.68, p< 0.01; ys = 0.46 to 0.76, p = 0.001; percent agreement: exact = 40.01, adjacent = 76.64). Agreement scores of 2 pairs of raters suggested that increased opportunities to observe subjects' behaviors which might mean higher frequency of behavior, might improve interrater reliability of the instrument. The overall internal consistency of the MAS was high (Cronbach's alpha = 0.79) but some of the items of the scale showed relatively weak correlations. Since there were 4 factors which corresponded to the 4 maintaining variables of the MAS resolved for the self-injurious and stereotyped behaviors but only 3 factors for the aggressive behavior, the validity study on the MAS suggested that the 4 factors of the MAS were conceptually meaningful for self-injurious and stereotyped behavior but not for aggressive behavior. Findings of the study suggested some of the items of the MAS should be modified in order to improve interrater reliability and internal consistency of the scale. Moreover, efforts should be paid to evaluate the effects of other extraneous variables such as mental / physical illnesses |
| Rights: | All rights reserved |
| Access: | restricted access |
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| File | Description | Size | Format | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| b1602879x.pdf | For All Users (off-campus access for PolyU Staff & Students only) | 3.35 MB | Adobe PDF | View/Open |
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